Steve punks his fanboys, fanboys take it like old times

Oh Steve, you can be such an evil fanboy mother. You had minions lined up, dumping thousands of dollars on your latest chunk of plastic. And now? Same minions, just less money. Don't get me wrong, if you were an early adopter of the iPhone and did not expect to get screwed...well...you just don't know how the world works. No, no, I don't mean to be mean. But in all seriousness, are any of us surprised that it only took 66 days for the price to drop $200? I'm certainly not.

The price drop we all expected to come just came a little earlier than expected. Most of us were waiting for the Christmas season to really get rolling, but some may not realize that there is a new wave of smart phones being introduced by the big guns here in the U.S. New BlackBerries, TONS of new HTCs (since when is Sprint the first one to throw down?), and a new RAZR to boot. Cell phone purchases have much more baggage than the aver mp3 player purchase. Not only does the consumer have to wrangle with contract discount dates, but they have to manage all those extra services that are tacked onto plans to ensure full functionality.

It sucks. I know. I'd be pissed too. Steve, you are a cruel mistress, but sometimes you just gatta do what you gatta do. Now I know someone figured up that Apple takes in around $350 per iPhone from AT&T (boo, it's still Cingular to me), so like most cell phones, they can easily be sold to consumers at a loss: the contracts make up for the cost of hardware. So why did Apple decide to introduce the iPhone as crazy expensive in the first place? Fear would be my guess. They had no way to know if people would roll will the price tag of the phone and the data/service plan. Plus, they had no way to know how the blogosphere would take their newest product. I bet they were simply afraid of them bombing, just like many were predicting. Apple can't survive on fanboys alone, not anymore. Now that we've hit a million strong sold, they can sit back and watch the money roll in.


So when am I going to buy one? Psh. I just dropped $400 on the Cingular 8125 last november, and I need to get at least a year and a half out of the little guy. Besides, you know they are going to do their usual post Christmas refresh, and that will include 3G. Plus, I'm just waiting for the kinks to get worked out. I was an early adopter of the ipod5G and now I'm out some of the features (like search) of the newer models.